By Usman Aliyu
A U.S.-based Nigerian health communication researcher, Abdulmalik Lawal, says personal perception of vulnerability to antibiotic-resistant infections influences responsible antibiotic use more strongly than public awareness campaigns.
Lawal, in his study on antibiotic use behaviour in Southwest Nigeria, said Nigeria remained particularly vulnerable to antibiotic resistance due to widespread self-medication and unsupervised use.
In the reports presented on Tuesday in Benin, he said the study was conducted among 417 adults across the six states of Southwest.
Lawal said the study examined the belief systems influencing antibiotic use behaviour amid growing concerns over antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
The findings come as the World Health Organisation (WHO) warns that drug-resistant infections could kill 10 million people annually by 2050 if urgent interventions are not implemented globally.
Lawal, a graduate researcher at University of Nevada, Reno, surveyed residents in Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Ondo and Ekiti states using statistical models designed to identify the factors most strongly linked to responsible antibiotic behaviour.
According to the study, personal risk perception, confidence in one’s ability to make appropriate antibiotic decisions, and awareness of the seriousness of drug-resistant infections emerged as the strongest predictors of responsible antibiotic use.
The study found that these three factors accounted for 86.5 per cent of participants’ behavioral intentions regarding antibiotic use.
“Awareness of a problem is not the same as feeling personally threatened by it, and this study makes that distinction impossible to ignore.
“If we want people in Southwestern Nigeria to use antibiotics correctly, we have to make the threat of resistance feel real and close, not like something happening to someone else far away,” he said.
According to him, one of the study’s major findings was that general awareness of antimicrobial resistance — the central focus of many public health campaigns — did not significantly influence participants’ intentions to use antibiotics responsibly.
He said practical understanding of antibiotic resistance and knowledge of how antibiotics work were found to positively shape health beliefs and behavioural intentions.
Lawal said the findings exposed critical gaps in existing AMR communication strategies in Nigeria and across sub-Saharan Africa.
According to him, many campaigns succeed in creating familiarity with the term “antimicrobial resistance” without changing the underlying beliefs that drive misuse of antibiotics.
He said the research also challenged assumptions that highlighting the benefits of responsible antibiotic use or addressing structural barriers alone would significantly influence antibiotic behaviour.
Lawal attributed this to the economic and social realities in many low-resource communities, where medication decisions are often driven by immediate symptom relief and cost concerns.
“The evidence tells us that benefit-focused messaging alone will not work in this context.
“What works is helping people understand that they personally are at risk, and then giving them the practical confidence to act on that understanding,” he said.
Lawal said that Nigerian public health institutions, media organisations, and community health workers redesign AMR campaigns to focus more on personal risk communication and practical confidence-building.
He also advised the use of real-life stories from individuals affected by resistant infections, alongside stronger community engagement to discourage self-medication and promote completion of prescribed antibiotic treatments.
The researcher noted that the research was inspired by the scale of preventable suffering caused by antibiotic misuse in Nigeria.
“This is not an abstract public health problem,” he said.(NAN) www.nannews.ng
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Edited by Victor Adeoti
